Wolverine: The Masochist
by Machine Man
Summary: Wolverine gets out of the mansion to clear his head.  Coincidentally, things get stabbed.
1. Chapter 1

Wolverine: The Masochist

Every few years I get this twinge in the back of my skull, sometimes from a boot, but other times it's like I need to run right out of the mansion and into some trees. I leave without telling anyone. It's a headache explaining myself when I get back, but I say screw it. It'd be like a wolf explaining why it howls: it doesn't have to, it's a goddammed wolf. Needless to say, during these "excursions" I let myself go a bit. I worry less about the way I look and more about the way a bear is trying to punch through my skull. But a man's got to have some standards, and blood is always a bit suspicious looking.

The worst part about having a beard is having to shave it, so I don't, usually. But today is a special day; it marks the five hour anniversary of me getting my ass-kicked outside a bar in Thompson City, Manitoba. I gotta work real hard to get drunk, but when I do I've got this big-ass problem called a mouth. I can smell a lot of different things, and a lot of 'em I can't stand, but I get a whiff o' bull-shit, and that's something I can't let waft around.

Late last night, this asswipe in the bar keeps going on an on about what a hard-ass he is, how many faces he's busted, how many women he'll be going home with tonight. I politely tell him across the bar that I've seen some ugly mutants in my day, but he's first-prize material. He tells me he aint no mutie sonofabitch. I ask what's wrong with being a mutie sonofabtich and if he'd like to repeat himself. He does.

So I put this asswipe in the gutter. Problem is, asswipes got thirty friends on a biker tour of the great north. I broke a few faces; then it was my turn. An adamantium skeleton doesn't do shit for your face, which a lead pipe and a few chains are more than sufficient to bust wide open.

I've taken more than a few whippings in my life. I've been broke as shit. I've been put through the ringer more than a few times, had this metal grafted to and then ripped off my bones, only to have it put back again. For those few moments the world is on fire, and I'm as close to hell as I can be, bub.

But here's the thing I can't shake: the fat bastard, the first asswipe, he gets up outta the gutter, walks up to me when I'm already down, puts a cigar out on my face and then spits right in my eye. What kinda bullshit is that? I remember a time when you put a guy down and he stayed down, and if he did get up, he ran home with his dick between his legs. But this piece? No, he can't just take a lickin' like a man. He's got to go all Frank Castle on me with tobacco and slobber. When the spit puddles in my eye, the claws almost, almost come out. It's probably for the better; I'd have a rough time explaining to Chuck and Scott why I gutted thirty bikers on my unannounced joy-ride.

I lay there for awhile while they kick the shit out of me. After a few minutes it doesn't hurt anymore; the healing factor's kicked in. Problem is I'm stone cold drunk, having just consumed a year's worth of Moose Head. Plus, the sicker and stupider I act, well, the more likely they are to not see me coming the next time. And there'll be a goddammed next time, real soon.

Which brings me to the present, shaving my face with a plastic razor in some whore's hotel room. She's passed out on the bed. I had nothing to do with her. The door was unlocked, so I let myself in to clean up a bit. I normally don't shave, but I also normally don't let blood freeze and crust over the hair on my upper lip. When I'm done dragging the hairs out of my face and watching the cuts heal after each bloody stroke, I ask the whore for a beer from the fridge. I take her silence as a yes. There's a half-eaten sandwich on the fridge, so I help myself to a meal. I don't recommend eating a whore's leftovers, especially when the whore is barely breathing with a needle in her arm, but I figure hepatitis and HIV aint got shit on my healing factor, and I'm hungry as hell.

I drink a couple of the whore's beers in the shower. Jean thought this habit was disgusting. I used to ask her which: drinking in the shower, or at 9 A.M. She just smiled, rolled her eyes, walked away. I'd give anything to smell her hair again, red with a curl just above her shoulders. Right now all I can smell is hotel shampoo and mildew in the cracks of the tile. As I'm drying myself off, the whore walks into the bathroom and starts to take a piss. I keep drying myself off. Whatever this chick's on, it's strong. She starts talking to me like I'm someone else. Then she realizes I'm not. She stands up and screams long enough to pull her panties up and pass out on the bath mat. I use someone's aftershave from the counter, put my shirt on, and walk out of the motel room.

I meet the owner of the aftershave in the parking lot.

"Hey, did you just walk out of room 315?" This punk is probably twenty-one, twenty-two at most. He's got a pack of cigarettes in his front jacket pocket, and one stuck above his left ear. "You owe me some money. She aint free."

"I didn't sleep with her."

"Oh yeah? What'd you do, play bingo? Talk about your feelings? Pay up!"

I punch the kid in his solar plexus, not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough to get my point across: I don't pay for what I don't screw. While he's bent over, I take his wallet and a zippo from his pocket, the cigarette from behind his ear, and light it up. He's got a hundred or so dollars in the wallet, so I take fifty or so and shove the rest in his mouth. When I'm halfway across the parking lot, I hear him yelling behind me.

"You're dead, you freak piece of shit!" He pulls heat. I turn to stare at him, walk towards him, slowly at first, with the pace quickening as I get closer. He fires a round into my forehead, which gives me a terrible kink in my neck. I cut his gun with my left claws and catch him with a right hook (no claws: I don't need a bloody corpse for the Mounties to find). He makes some god-awful noises on the ground because it's hard to make words with your jaw in your ear. The round falls out of my forehead next to his face. I take another twenty for my trouble. But you know what I don't do? Spit on him. That's fucking gross.

* * *

I'm going to head farther north for a few days, get my head right. Sometimes that feral stuff fills me up to the point of overflowing, and when it bubbles over people get hurt. Bad. I'd rather take it somewhere it belongs, to a place where life and death are a bit more concrete.

Before I hit the road-or lack thereof-I stop by the bar where I got the shit kicked out of me. It's a humbling experience walking in the front door, having the bartender stare at me like I'm garbage.

"We don't serve your kind here."

"What kind is that?"

"Mutie shit."

"I just figured since this place is a toilet that I'd feel right at home." He pulls a shotgun from behind the bar. I make it a sawed off. It feels good to flex the claws, especially after my uncharacteristic restraint last night. "Now, unless you want me to do the same to your pecker, how about some service? Jack. The bottle. Now." The other patrons leave the bar. I order some nachos, no spit, and drink the bottle slowly in front of the bartender. He stares at me the entire time. I ask him if he wouldn't mind turning around so I don't have to stare at his goiters while I eat. When I'm good and finished, I throw a couple of twenties on the bar, grab a handful of peanuts, and walk out the door.

Outside are a couple of motorcycles. I use the claws to cut open the ignition and take myself a borrowed joyride up the two lane highway. The air is cold and it stings. It's late spring here, but anyone from south of the border wouldn't know spring from winter. But the people here do. So does the wildlife. The cold in spring will kill you; winter will bury you. It takes a helluva lot of survival skills to live out here, so whatever does manage to stay alive through the winter months is ripe and pissy when it wakes up in the spring.

I'm not three miles outside of town when I smell blood, fresh and warm. The blood is human, but the sounds I hear when I shut the bike down are not. Probably some jackass walked into the wrong part of the woods, woke something up that wasn't quite ready for breakfast, but is about to make an exception.

When I get off the highway and over the first hill, I find that there are two jackasses that walked into the wrong part of the woods, and one angry, pissed off mama grizzly that has cut up one of the hunters badly. Dental records badly. But I can hear him breathing, a wheeze through the blood in his throat that he's choking on. His friend's not cut up, but he's in no better shape. He's shooting this bear in its winter fat with a tiny handgun, maybe a 9mm. All he's doing now is pissing it off, which pisses me off cause now I'm going to have to kill a bear that didn't need killing.

And maybe a yuppie hunter with a peashooter.

When I get closer, I see the real hunting gun lying on the ground. The one who's firing the 9mm smells like piss. I'm guessing this is his first hunt, and I'm tempted to let it be his last. I let the claws free and the bear pauses for a moment to take in the more dangerous predator. It bows its head a bit, stamps its foot. The yuppie with the 9mm fires three rounds into my chest and one past my arm. Why do we give guns to these people?

When he sees that I'm a man, he's temporarily relieved. His heart rate slows and the cold sweat that's mixed with his own urine begins to dry on his leg. But when he sees what kind of man I am, he sweats like a fat kid stuck in a jungle-gym. He's lucky I'm not some park ranger or hiker, dead in my own blood with three rounds from his gun. He's lucky that I don't cut his balls off for shooting at a bear with a 9mm. He's lucky I'm watching the bear, which is now charging at him while he's staring at me. The bullets push out of my wounds. The last little snap is what stings, when the hot metal is pushed past the skin. The bullets make steam in the the red snow. The yuppie finally sees the bear charging, rearing up on its hind legs to take a nice swipe at his fat, meaty face. I hate to rob the bear of a kill that is rightfully his; I'm no stranger to the joy of sinking claws into flesh, a tug followed by a gentle tear.

But instead I play the X-man and I throw myself in front of the bear and it's my face that's bloody and hanging off my skull like pizza cheese. The bear is confused. It was a killing swipe. For me it just stings like all hell and makes it hard to see with my left eyebrow hanging past my cheek. I give the bear a couple of stabs to the throat with a twist of the claws. I want the death to be short, painless, and honorable. I want it to die like it should, not from some infection from the bullets lodged in its winter fat. Not at the hands of some piss-stinking yuppie asshole. When the bear gives its last, deep breath, I take the claws out and turn to the yuppie, now ass-first in the snow and shaking.

I scream at him.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" These are the words I'm forming with my mouth, but they're muted by my face that's slowly reforming over my jaw. He hears nothing more than the incoherent screaming of a dead man who's impossibly alive. He wets himself again. I laugh long and deep and slide my face back over my broken nose. I hold my face on at the temples just long enough to say "get him to a hospital" and I leave him in the snow and his own piss. I walk back down the hill towards the highway, and I turn to see him still sitting in the snow.

"Now, piss-ant!" I yell, and he scrambles for his supplies and fallen partner.

On the highway I get the scent. The same animals who beat me half to death last night have been down this road within the past few hours. The wind shifts, points north. I start the bike up. I smile. It's going to be a good evening.

* * *

A couple of hours later I'm tied to a wooden pole next to bird-girl and her sidekick puss 'n boots. We were captured by the same biker trash that spit in my face last night, and you know what? His friends think spitting is funny, too. Since I've been tied to this pole I've been hit with rocks, sticks, and two liters of saliva. I swear to god...

But I'm only chained here until they set me on fire, and I want to be set on fire. I'm going to give these guys the night of their lives. Which is why I came here, and which is why-for the time being-I'll put up with getting doused in beer-stinking biker-spit. For the time being.

About two hours ago-just before sunset-I caught the trail of these bigots and followed it up the highway and into a small canyon. From the cliffs I saw that they'd set up a makeshift campsite, and had two badly beaten mutants tied up in one of the tents. Every few minutes a new biker went in the tent, and every few minutes later, he came out, zipping his pants and waving for the next guy. It took everything I had not to leap off the cliff and drive my claws straight through their mouths and out the back of their skulls, but that would just get us all in trouble, and I needed those kids free and safe. What happens to me isn't important; I gave up on redemption a little while ago, say WWI. I've seen what men can do to one another, and I've seen what men can do to mutants. But they haven't seen what I can do-seen what I'm best at.

So I kicked a rock off the side and it hit one of the dumb bastards right in the head. I tried to fake surprise when he saw me, when he yelled "it's that mutie sonofabitch from last night". I even tried faking pain when they "caught" me in the woods. What can I say? I'm a terrible actor. But they bought it. And now I'm tied to a pole and they're pouring gasoline on the two kids and me. When they gas cat-girl she screams and hisses; the bird just stares at them, the kind of stare that tells me that all that stands between her and murder is a half inch of rope around her hands and feet. I like this kid. She's got spunk.

The men cheer. The gasoline burns our eyes. I try to tell the kids it'll be okay. They look at me like I'm crazy. Like I'm a masochist or something. They don't know the half of it.

The fattest one, the one with the spit fetish, drains the bottle of beer into his mouth and on his beard, throws the bottle into the air, and screams as it smashes into the crowd.

"Boys, let's have a bar-bee-que!" He walks towards the cat-girl and takes out a lighter. I need to get his attention.

"Hey, bub. You got a spare set of assless chaps? I feel a bit overdressed for this sort of thing." He closes the lighter and walks towards me.

"What'd you say, mutie?"

I smile. "I said that if I'd known it was this kind of rally, I'd have brought some vaseline."

He punches my jaw, then recoils a bit and rubs his fist.

"I think we'll start with the smart ass," he says. He takes out his lighter and holds it up for the crowd to see. They cheer and drink and stumble. Half of them are too drunk to piss straight, let alone fight. This is my kind of crowd. "You got anything else to say, mutant?"

"I'm going to gut you."

"We'll see how you feel in a few minutes here." And he's right. I'll be feeling all out of sorts here real soon. That's bad for me. But it's worse for him.

He flicks the lighter and drops it at my feet. The flames start with my boots, melting the rubber and leather off of my feet. The flames lick at my legs, singeing my jeans and making my belt buckle molten hot. It burns a hole through my shirt and leaves a circle tattooed on my stomach. The fire eats away at my beard; it creeps up my face, past my ears and onto my scalp, burning everything in between. I take out the claws to let them get nice and warm and ready for cutting. The fire burns at the ropes on my wrists, slowly weakening them.

The biker walks towards the cat-girl, gives her a big tongue kiss and licks her face, then laughs and flicks open the lighter.

"You've been good to us," he says. "I hate to waste such a fine piece of ass." She hisses at him. "Whoa, kitty. Bad girl." He punches her in the jaw. I've seen enough. Engulfed in flames I start to laugh. I laugh because it's funny. I laugh because they don't know. I laugh because I see what's coming, and not a one of these drunk assholes has a clue. But the party stops to watch me. They watch as I laugh and burn and laugh some more. They watch as the skin drips off of me like marshmallow in a camp fire. They listen as I scream and laugh and lean way forward, putting stress on the ropes. But when the ropes break and I'm smoldering in the snow and my claws are glowing in the dark, well, nobody's laughing anymore.

The biker pulls a pistol.

"Don't you fuckin' move."

I walk toward him, leaving steaming footprints in the snow. He fires a clip into my face and the muscle spits it back out. Before he can reload I cut his left hand off. I hold his new stump up in front of his face, and with the other set of claws I cauterize the wound. He screams something wretched. I pull the claws in and backhand him hard enough to break his jaw. When he falls to the ground the crowd is silent. With every one of them watching I step on his balls. They cringe. But I don't spit on him. I'm not like that.

I cut the kids free. The cat stretches, flexes her claws. The bird is in the air immediately, swooping over the bikers as the shoot wildly into the air. The rate she's diving, they haven't got a prayer of tagging her. She's taking big cuts out of their faces, grabbing some and then dropping them. They're screaming and yelling and the smart ones are trying to ride away. But the bird is the least of their worries. They've got a pissed off kitty and a wolverine at their backs.

I offered the kids a ride back into town. They turned me down. Turns out they like living out here. The animals are less interested in killing them than the people. I can't say that I blame them. That's why I come out here; sometimes you just need a little company that understands you when you growl.

I rode the bike back into town, back to the same bar where all this started. I walk into the bar in a leather jacket and some jeans. I didn't look for boots or a shirt. My feet are still red hot and I didn't feel like scraping the blisters off with boot leather. My hair is starting to re-grow, but whenever it gets burnt off it grows in kinda crooked.

The bartender gives me a bottle of Jack without a word. I could grow to like this place. I eat a few peanuts and down the bottle when I feel something wet on my foot. I look down at the brown liquid between my toes. A man with a wad of chew in his lip nods at me.

"Sorry mister," he says.

God I hate spit.


	2. Masochist: II

**Wolverine: The Masochist, Part II**

I don't sleep at night. I get a bad rap for being a grumpy old man, but the truth is, if anyone else-healing factor or not-got as little sleep as I do, they'd be a little pissy too. Lucky for me that being pissy doesn't get in the way of what I do best. I do some of my best work on very little sleep.

I can't say why I don't sleep in general. I know why I don't sleep in the mansion. It's been knocked down and blown to hell too many times. I don't worry about myself, and if that ain't clear then you don't know me very well. I worry about the kids, even the annoying ones. I remember when I first moved in, and when I first met Bobby. He froze more cans of beer than I can count; half the time he froze them to my hand (he wasn't as precise back then). I could've killed him. I've never had time for a sense of humor. It's a luxury people develop when they don't have enough to worry about. It's easy to laugh at danger when you can only hear echoes of it, howling in the distant night; it's a different thing when it's tearing at your throat, drinking your blood.

Now Bobby's one of the most dangerous mutants on the planet, maybe one of the most lethal heroes in the galaxy, but I still worry about him. I can take a missile to the face, but Bobby, as powerful as he is, has got to see it coming to do anything about it. So I don't sleep in the mansion. Jean used to say that I act like a momma bear around her cubs. I had to hide a smile. Jean could always do that to me. I had time for her sense of humor; call me a hypocrite.

As with most things, Jean was right. I hear every creak and groan in the mansion. I can smell every corner of the grounds. I once-in a state of drunken insomnia-made the mailman piss his pants. He was an hour earlier than the schedule, trying to get done early for Christmas. Before I knew what I was doing, I was down the stairs with my claws to his throat. Lucky for the postman, Charles likes to get up early, too. He shut me down and apologized to the mailman. I woke up in the bushes two hours later with frozen feet and a hangover.

So while the mansion feels like home, it's anything but peaceful. God help the soul that breaks in while this bear is home. Chuck had me on a short chain; Scott doesn't care anymore. I never did. I'd rather paint the walls with blood than watch another one of our kids get dragged outta their bed by some zealot freak-show with another agenda.

Scott knows how, um, _strongly_ I feel about this, so every now and then he taps me out and lets me hit the road for a while. I've had less trouble letting Scott guard the place since he became a little unstable. Before I couldn't trust him to do what's necessary, but that was before he singlehandedly blew a sentinel and half the trees on the property to hell. I'm not going to say he's as good at guarding the place as I am, but I will say that the guy who breaks in on _his_ watch will be every bit as sorry when all that's left of his sorry ass is a smoldering crater. I've been hit by those blasts more times than I can count, and though I'd never tell Scott this, they hurt like a sonofabitch. And that's when he's holding back.

Scott and I, in more recent years, have come to an understanding about one another. He doesn't ask as many questions, and I don't give him a reason to. He catches up to me before I leave.

"There's no smoking on school premises," he says. I take one step out the gate towards the street. He laughs. "Can I bum one?" I hand him a smoke and light it for him.

"Never thought you were the smoking type."

"I never thought you were the lullaby type."

"Shit, you heard that?"

"We all did. Hank almost cried."

"She couldn't sleep, so I..."

"You don't need to explain yourself. I'm just glad you didn't give her a beer."

"I will next time."

"Emma thought it was...quaint."

"What is it you see in her, Scott?" He smirks.

"The same thing as anyone else." His face twitches a bit. He rubs his temples. "That's the bad thing about dating a telepath."

"You're a braver man than me."

"Have a good trip, Logan." He finishes his cigarette and flips it to the curb. I start the bike. "Don't forget your helmet." I laugh at him and knock on my skull a couple of times.

In an hour I'm outside the city, in the open air, where a man can get some sleep.

* * *

This trip is south. I never plan where I'm going, but I do work with a direction in mind. This time the nose points south. Where I end up is a surprise every time. This time it's West Virginia. Most people can't find much good in a place like this. I can't say that I blame them. It's untamed, unapologetic, and in some ways, disgusting. I fit right in.

On trips like this, I spend most of my time in the hills, hunting and sleeping. Most people couldn't sleep in country like this, but most people can't re-grow their arm when a cougar gnaws on it. Don't laugh; I woke up that way. I didn't kill the pitiful creature. It was a young thing and looking for a bigger kill than it could chew. I showed it the claws and told it to scram. It hissed and ran away with its tail between its legs. I held the skin and bone in place and let it regrow. It always takes longer when I'm tired.

During my hunting I find an old cabin next to a freshwater spring. From the smell, four people live here: an old man, a woman, and two children. I can't tell if the children are boys or girls; as sick as it sounds to polite company, children smell different after puberty. That's as far as I'll explain.

I watch the cabin for a while. The woman hangs clothes to dry. No one else is around. A gun cocks downwind. I couldn't smell him. I do now. Brut aftershave, damp flannel, menthol chewing tobacco. Arthritis in the right hand. Slow trigger finger. Cut the barrel off, deal with the fallout. A little buckshot in the face never hurt anyone. Hell.

I swipe behind me and cut the barrel off the front of the gun. The man (older than I thought) stumbles backwards over a tree stump and fires the gun over my left shoulder. There is a sharp pain on the side of my head, and my ear is hanging next to my shoulder.

"Sonofabitch..."

"Aw jeezus mister," he yells, "I didn't mean to..."

"Stop yelling. It hurts my ear. The one you blew off." Blood seeps through my fingers and down my arm, but I can feel the skin start to regrow over the hole in my head. When the lobe is attached, I take my hand off my head and let the healing factor finish the job. It must be something different, watching a man's ear reattach to his head.

The man turns white, vomits into a bush.

"What in god's name are you?"

"A hiker. Do you shoot all hikers in the side of the head?"

"None that got back up." He smiles. "You're not from around here, are you?"

"Nope." I help him to his feet. "You got anything to eat?"

"We got plenty to eat," says the woman. "But you're gonna have to leave your knives outside." I sheath the claws. She takes a step back.

"Maybe I should eat on the porch?" I ask.

* * *

We have rabbit stew with mountain vegetables. It seems there's all kinds of plants up in the hills that you can eat that won't kill you, but that doesn't mean they taste good.

"How is everything?" she asks.

"Wonderful," I say.

I take a look around the room. Modest setup. One room house. Three beds in the corner. Stove. Probably an outhouse in the back.

"It's not much," says the man. "But it's home."

"It's nice." Truth is, it's a hellhole, even by my standards. I know there are those without, but living like this is a choice. Maybe the man reads the look on my face, or the tone in my voice.

"You don't have to lie. It's a dump. My grandfather lived here when my family first moved south. He'd lost everything, and this shack is what he managed to scrape together for shelter. We've since put the oven and the outhouse in. My grandfather used to shit in the woods."

"Papa!" the woman yells.

"It's okay. I did it just yesterday," I say. The woman turns bright red.

"Well, there's a difference between what one _needs_ to do, and what one _wants_ to do. If Papa had his way, he'd relieve himself where he pleased, and be naked as the animals." She brings the pot of stew over and refills my bowl. Yum.

"So why do you all live here?" The looks on their faces change. They pause a moment, exchange a glance or two that I'm not meant to see, then the old man speaks.

"We're here because we have to be." The woman exhales, her heart rate increases, and her face becomes flushed. "No other reason."

I don't even need my senses to figure out they're not telling the whole story.

A bit after dark, a boy and a girl walk in from the porch carrying more rabbits and vegeta...plants. The boy is a head taller than the girl, and his jeans are torn above the left knee. I can smell his deodorant, his shampoo. The girl is blonde with a smudge of dirt across her cheek. Her face and shoulders are freckled, and her eyes are a cold gray.

"Who the hell is this?" asks the boy.

"That's no way to talk to company, boy," says the old man. The woman just glares at him.

"Don't gimme that look, ma," says the boy.

"And that's no way to talk to your mother, either." The boy shuts his mouth, reluctantly, and mumbles something unflattering under his breath. "This man here is a guest of ours. His name is...well, I actually don't remember getting your name, son."

"You got anything to smoke?" I ask. The boy hands me a pack of cigarettes. It's kiddie stuff, but it'll do. I light a cigarette, inhale deeply, and let the smoke swirl around my lungs as the healing factor tidies up after it. "Name's Logan."

"Nice to meet you, Logan," says the kid sarcastically. He reaches to take back his cigarettes, but his mom intercepts them.

"You shouldn't be smokin' anyway."

"God, mom, don't gimme that bullsh-"

"She's right," I say. I take another drag. "It's not good for you." The boy rolls his eyes and walks to the back of the room. He sits on his bed and listens to an iPod.

"I'm sorry," says the old man, "but we never introduced ourselves. I'm Buck, and this is my daughter Shelby, and my grandson Jack and my granddaughter Scarlet. We're not much to look at, but we're family."

I put the cigarette out on my leg, which startles the girl. She hasn't made eye contact with me since she walked in the house. "Is she..." I stop to gauge their reaction, but I don't get anything so I just ask. "Is she...you know."

"She's fine," says Shelby. "She just hasn't been the same since we left her father."

"Now Shelby, we don't need to get him involved, this is a _family_ matter, after all."

Shelby stops for a moment, then thinks better of it. Her heart rate has increased again. She looks at me for a few seconds. "Scarlet doesn't talk much. That's all."

I'm not much for asking questions, mostly because I hate answering them. I decided I didn't want to push the issue, and that I didn't much care anyway. A small group of extended family living in the hills and acting all paranoid and private just isn't that unusual in West Virginia.

"I suppose you'll be wanting to stay," Buck asks.

"I'm only asking you for two things: one, a place to sleep. That can be outside, that can be on the porch, or it can be in the surrounding woods. I don't care. Second: you all seem like honest people. That's because you're shitty liars. So do me a favor: if you're going to lie to a man, don't invite him into your house, and don't pretend he's too stupid to know something's wrong." The room is dead silent. "Now if you wouldn't mind too much, I'd like a couple more smokes. I'll be on the porch." The woman hands me the cigarettes and a box of matches and I leave the house.

I can hear them whispering from my chair on the porch, but nothing they say is worth listening for. When the whispering stops, the old man comes outside.

"Buck," I say, "I didn't mean to intrude. But something's obviously wrong up here."

"How'd you know?" he asks.

"I can smell it." I smile, and he gives me that look that I get a lot, like: _is this guy serious_? _Can he really smell fear?_ I like that the question stays unanswered. Maybe I can and maybe I can't, but that doesn't change the fact that before I smell the fear, I smell people's piss as it soaks their pants. Call me clairvoyant.

The man pulls a board up from the front porch and removes a jug of liquor from the hole. "Don't tell Shelby. Her ex-husband was a drinker. Me, I don't need the stuff, but it aint ever hurt me neither."

"I'll toast to that." He hands me a glass and we drink together. The stuff is strong. The man coughs a bit.

"Jeezus that burns."

"What burns?" asks Shelby from inside the house.

"Nothing, nothing. I just dropped my cigarette in my lap. Damned arthritis!" he says. He gets really quiet. "Like I said, her husband Mikey was a drinker, and the subject of her husband is a bit...well, touchy."

"What happened to her husband?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me," I said.

* * *

Buck got really drunk that night, and slept on the porch where he sat. I don't sleep well when there are people around, so I listened to the wind in the woods and the sounds of predators approaching, and then leaving when they got a whiff of me. The night gave me a long time to think about what I'd heard from Buck.

As it turns out, Buck's son-in-law joined a snake-worshipping cult about two miles away in a small, mined-out coal town. Blah blah blah now the men are all acting like snakes and biting people and making them snakes too, or worse, dead. Before Buck passed out, he said: "You probably think I'm crazy."

I said: "I've heard worse."

The family hadn't been here all that long. I had figured this much, what with the boy wearing new deodorant, the iPod, the fact that under the girl's bed were magazines and other such feminine necessities. They didn't have the hillbilly look about them at all really. Other than a slight drawl, they were nothing more than a group of townies with few dirt stains.

They'd come up to this cabin to avoid Shelby's ex-husband. I had guessed that he didn't know where the cabin was; otherwise these people were either stupid, naive, or both.

As the sun comes up, I walk into the woods to take a piss. The wind is really whipping around through the trees, and a light rain has started to fall. I find the perfect pissing tree, just wide enough to cover the spray, but small enough to avoid splash back. In mid-relief, a slimy hand slams my face into the tree.

"Where are they?" it hisses.

My face (shattered) slides down the tree bark (burns) and into my own puddle o' piss (smells). I think about asking him who he is and to whom he is referring, but he smells like snake skin, is super strong, hisses when he talks, and smashes my face further into the ground with his heel. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that he's Mikey.

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're Mikey."

"How do you know my name?"

"Because I'm going to kill you."

"What?"

I slice through his left leg, causing him to stumble backwards and roll down the hill. He's screaming, but I don't hear it. It's like my ears are filled with blood. Hell, they might be. But then something weird happens, and when I say weird, consider the context. This sonofabitch slithers away, _slithers_, on his belly back into the woods. His lower leg and foot starts to twitch. I kick at it, and then _it_ slithers in the same direction as the gimp-snake. Maybe some sort of healing factor? I don't know, but it's nasty as hell.

My arm starts to itch a bit. I look down, and the freak's blood is eating at my arm, almost faster than the healing factor can rebuild the skin.

I walk a quarter mile back to the cabin. Buck's still asleep on the front porch.

"Buck," I yell down the hill, "I think we've got a bit of a problem. You see, you failed to mention that Shelby's ex, Mikey, is a half-snake, half-man, super-strong, slithering, lispy, acid-bleeding, creepy-son-of-a-bitch."

Buck doesn't move. He must be hungover.

"Buck," I yell. As I get closer I realize just how quiet it is around the house. "Buck," I say again, but I know he won't answer me. If I weren't so damn distracted I'd have smelled it from up the hill. Buck is dead, with the same shit that ate up my arm dripping from his face into his lap. With pieces of his face, also, dripping into his lap. It's an awful smell, and I really can't believe I didn't notice it before. I put his hat down over his face. Goodbye, Buck.

The door is open. A different sort of smell comes from inside the house. I can't recognize it at first. Is that...cotton candy? Before I realize why a backwater shack in Shitsville smells like cotton candy, a two by four cracks me over the back of skull. My ears ring like a bell. I used to wonder if anyone else could hear the sound, but I've since realized that it's just one of the many drawbacks of 1. super-sensitive hearing, and 2. a thick, metallic, resonant skull. The engineers at Weapon-X didn't really think that one out. Of course there's lots of things they didn't think out, which is probably why they got cut up so damn bad.

The two by four is cut in half and a girl is huddled on the floor begging for her life. I'm not saying I'd cut up a little girl; leave that to Creed. But for an instant, while the ringing is still in my ears and the pain is still shooting down my spine, for one feral second, my jaw is locked and I'm screaming with my mouth shut and I swear to god I'm going to cut in half the person who hit me in the head with a goddamned two by four. Then I realize who hit me and why she did, and I feel all gosh-damn bad that I popped the claws at her and I hope she didn't wet herself.

"I'm not a snake monster," I say.

"My dad's not a snake monster!"

"Uh. Okay. I'm not a slithery, creepy motherfucker. Not that your dad is a creepy motherfu-"

"He's not!"

"Right, right. Why don't you come out here in the light where I can see you." She inches out of the corner and the shadows. She's not hurt, but she's scared as hell. I don't push the point about her dad being a slimy, slithery, creepy, sucker-punching sonofabitch. Even though he is. "Where's your mom?" That sends her over the edge. The waterworks, the wailing. I try to think what to do. I take off my shirt and offer it to her. The way she looks at it reminds me of how dirty it is. I almost remind her that my shirt wouldn't be caked in mud and piss if it weren't for her dad. I decide to let it go and put my flannel back on.

When Jubilee cries, I usually tell her to stop. Then she laughs, punches me in the arm, shakes her fist because punching me in the arm hurt her fist and was, generally speaking, a bad idea, and then I grumble something and she looks at me like she's my own daughter, and if I ever cried-which I don't-I'd cry in that moment, caught up in all the joy and shit.

"Stop it," I tell her. She doesn't stop crying. "Crying about it won't help." She gets louder. "Aww for the love of god, we'll get your mom back, and if she's already dead, we'll kill every last sonofabitch snake-freak that laid his scales on her." The look she gives me is somewhere between disgust and horror, but you know what? She's not crying anymore.

I tell her we're going hunting, and that she needs to wash of the stink of that lip-gloss.

"I think it smells good," she says.

"Yeah, if you want to get shot in the head for smelling like clown shit."

"You don't have many friends, do you?" she asks.

"No. I don't." She washes her face and puts her hair up. I make her put on "stinky" boots so her feet don't rot. I don't know how far we've got to hike, but I'm not stopping for blisters and toe-aches. "Look, I didn't mean it smelled bad. It smelled fine if you're, you know, into that. All I meant was..."

"All you mean was that if we're going to sneak up on somebody, it's best not to announce ourselves with our 'clown-shit' stink."

"Yeah...uh, yeah." She's more talkative than I thought she'd be. So talkative in fact that I have to ask: "When I first met you, you didn't say a word."

"That's 'cause my stupid brother never stops cussing, and my grandpa tells the most boring stories."

"That reminds me. When we walk outside, I'm gonna need you to not look to your left."

"Why?"

I explain to her gently what about how her grandfather's face is more in his lap than on his face. She takes it well, considering the fact that her mother and brother are also missing, probably taken by the people who turned her grandfather in to face-paste.

"We need to get moving," she says.

"Agreed." We walk outside and I smell the air, moist and dank. "We need to go north."

"I know. That's where the church is."

"The what?"

"The church. It's where my dad got turned into that whatever he is. I think it started there. They play with snakes during their services. Some religious deal." She stops for a second. "Wait, could you _smell_ them?"

"Yep."

"All the way down _here_?"

"Mmm hmm. Why, how far is it?"

"On foot? Probably two hours. That's some sniffer you've got." We walk for a bit. "Wait, what's that like in the bathroom?"

"You don't wanna know."

* * *

It takes us every last minute of two hours to get to the church. It's the goddammed scariest place I've ever seen. The windows are completely boarded up. The foundation is growing black mold, and there are vines growing up nearly ever inch of the exterior. The steeple is leaning to the east and the only window, a circular, red stained-glass window, has a picture of some saint holding two snakes. This is the holy church of the satanic poltergeist.

The red window flickers like an open flame. This scene belongs to a dark and stormy night, but it's a mountain sunset without a cloud in the sky, the rain burning away in a sweet smell that makes me forget I'm in a hillbilly hellhole.

The girl and I are watching the place from behind some bushes. She keeps trying to peak over the bushes to find her mother, and maybe her brother, though she doesn't seem to like him too much.

"He can become one of those snaky-nastoids," she says. "I just want my mom back." I'd rather not have one more snaky-nastoid to kill, so I tell her to sit still while I check the place out. As I cross the dirt road, one of them comes out to smoke a cigarette. He waves at me just as cordial as a southern gent. I wave back. He asks me about the weather as I walk towards him. I tell him the mountains are beautiful this time of year. He agrees. He offers me a cigarette when I reach the porch. I thank him, and stab a hole straight through his reptilian, sonofabitch, inbred head. Virginia Slims. Goddamn, what are you, a woman? I put the cigarette out on his face, and even though the freak is dead, the skin heals up over the burn. Looks like I ain't got a corner on the healing factor market anymore. Now any damn freak that wants to can put his face or legs back on. It's a shame really. There are just some folks that should stay dead when you put 'em that way. Wade Wilson for example…I don't have time to go into it. He's a cockburn.

I wave the girl over from across the street. When she gets to the porch, she's all revved like she's going in with me.

"You're not my sidekick, and you'll die." She's disappointed, but she gets the point. I tell her she can have a real special job. "You stay out here, and after I go in, make sure you jam this door shut." I break her off a piece of pipe from the gas meter and hand it to her. "You shove this in the door just as soon as I shut it. Do not let _anyone_ out of here, you understand?" She nods. "Because if you come in here, you won't like what you see, and I hope you don't have any special attachment to that dad of yours." She shakes her head. "Good."

"What about my mom?"

"Well, if she's not blindfolded, she may be scarred for life, but that's better than being dead or a snake mutant from hell."

"Agreed."

I ask her if she's ready and she tells me yes. I tell her that as soon as she bars the door she should run and hide in the same bushes that we came from.

"But what if you need help?" she asks.

I chuckle. "Darlin'," I say, "you don't know me very well."

I open the door and she quickly shuts it behind me, a little too quickly. The bar screeches against the metal door. Every last one of their yellow, reptile eyes turns and looks at me.

The larges of the snake-men is standing at the pulpit. His face looks like a cobra, and he's holding maybe ten rattlesnakes in his hands that just keep biting him. He should be dead ten times over, but he looks like a lumberjack that's hungry for pancakes. Of course he's a slimy, snake-lookin' lumberjack, but you get the point.

"My brothers," he says, waving his hands around all mystical like. "It seems we have a new believer."

One of the snakes, missing a left leg, hobbles out into the aisle on a stump that's started to re-grow.

"Father Aapep, I have seen this man before," he shouts. "This man is the man who cut my leg off."

"It's re-growing. Don't be a pussy."

"Enough!" yells the priest, preacher, snake-faced-dude-guy. "If he truly wishes, he may become one of us, as our other converts have so chosen." A crimson curtain opens behind him. Scarlet's mother, Shelby, and her son Jack are tied to crucifixes. Both have been stripped to their underwear. Jack is skinner than I thought he'd be, and his mother is…well, that's probably inappropriate to say given the situation.

I let the claws slide out slowly.

"Well now, it would seem our new convert is not what he seems, either."

"Yeah Father! That's what I was gon' say! He's got them claws, and they's what cut my leg off!" says Mikey.

"You don't say," replies Father Pep or whatever. "Well, let's give our convert a taste of what's to come." The priest slides, or slithers, or glides, or whatever the hell you call it, over to Jack and bites him on the neck. His ten snakes bite him too, on his head, his face, his chest. "And they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them!" He wipes Jack's blood from his face. As he does, Jack starts convulsing, turning green. I've seen enough. I walk down the middle of the aisle, cutting off any hand that's stupid enough to touch me, and let me tell you, you ain't heard screeching until you've heard a half-man, half-snake hiss and screech after losing a limb. I like the sound so much that I keep doing it.

"I'll kill him Father Pep!" shouts Mikey. He leaps at me from behind his pew. I stab him in the gut and lift him up high enough to let him look down at me. I want him to know that the shot he landed earlier was lucky, and that I don't ever, for no goddamned man or snake man, fall face-first into my own piss. When I feel like he's gotten the point I cut his head off and let that acid-shit drip all over the floor, some of it dripping down my claws and eating into my skin, some eating away slowly at my face.

Scarlet hears the screeching from outside and opens the door to look in. I look back at her with half of my face melted off.

"You shut that goddamn door." She obliges.

For the next thirty minutes I go to work, slicing and dicing limbs that keep crawling back to their masters, reattaching and healing and all the while spraying acid all over me. It burns like hellfire, but I keep cutting and they keep dropping. Finally half the floor is melted, exposing the basement. It's full of snakes. Yeah, it's fuckin' clever.

"You butchered my congregants."

"Um, yep."

"That I cannot abide." He slides up next to Shelby. His snakes hiss and bare their fangs at her. "I guess I'll just have to start from scratch." Before he can bite her, Jack wakes up and bites a chunk from his neck. Acid sprays everywhere, and Jack hisses as it drips down his face. Shelby screams.

I take this opportunity to sink my claws into Pep's face real deep. This is my favorite part, of the claws that is. I love watching people watch them hit their face. They get all cross-eyed and goofy, and they all make that same face, that "oh hell, he just stabbed me in the face" face. I dig it man, I'm not going to lie.

He takes a couple of swipes at my gut with his talons, and tears off some meat. That just pisses me off. I twist the claws and watch his face bend to match. I throw him in the basement with his snakes.

"They won't kill me, you know!" he yells. "They are my children, one and all!"

Jack helps his mother down from the cross. "He's right," Jack says. "He'll just sit down there until he heals and finds a way out. Those snakes aren't going to kill him."

"I figured as much." I walk out to the gravel parking lot where there are nothing but pickups with confederate flags for rear windshields. Jack follows me, helping his mother walk out the door. Scarlet hugs her mother and stares at Jack.

"Jack, you're…uglier," she says.

"I'm what?"

"You're a snake…thing."

He finds a mirror on one of the trucks. Part of his face is scarred from the acid. The rest is green and scaly.

"Well, I guess it could be worse," he says. He doesn't see, but Scarlet shakes her head in response. She's right: he's one ugly sonofabitch, but he ain't dead. Not like ol' Pep's gonna be. I find a spare gas can in the bed of one of the trucks. "What are you gonna do?" Jack asks. I hold the gas can in my hand and stare at him, then the gas can, then him. It hits him. "Oh, fire."

Fuckin' hillbilly.

I walk past the dead guy on the porch, grab his lighter and one of his pussy-ass Virginia Slims. When I get to the hole, Pep's already started to heal a bit. He's even wiggling about; well, writhing really, but you could really tell that his brain was almost back together. Another couple of minutes and he'd have been walking.

"You'll be sorry, mister! You should've joined. There is nowhere to hide from the almighty. His judgment will be final, and by heaven, he'll cleanse this world with fire."

"It's funny you say that, there Pep. I had a real similar idea." I pour the gasoline in his face. The snakes next to him hiss and scurry away from the gasoline.

"What are you doing?" he screams. "I'm a man of god."

"Say hi to him for me. Tell him I'll be awhile coming home."

"Rot in hell!"

I really want to say 'you first,' but that'd just be tacky. Instead I say: "Okay. I'm gonna light you on fire now." I take out one of the, choke, Vagina Slims and light it up. I take me a nice, long drag, then drop it onto his snake-face. The flames engulf him, and in a last desperate attempt, he leaps and catches the edge of the hole with his hand. He shrieks like a demon, hisses and writhes. I punch my claws through his hand and cut his arm off at the wrist with my spare hand. He falls back into the hole and the fire and the snakes that hiss and die with his ugly ass.

Outside the family is together. Shelby goes to thank me with a kiss, then thinks better of it. It's only then that I run my hand over my face and realize that between the fire, smoke, and acid, there's not a whole lot left.

"Your face," says Scarlet.

"It'll heal."

"Mine too?" asks Jack.

"Probably not." His shoulders shrink and he slithers off towards the cabin. "Did I say something?"

"No," says Shelby. "He'll get over it. Of course, it'll take Scarlet and me awhile, but we'll be able to look at him sooner or later."

"Take care, and get the hell out of these hills," I tell them. The family walks away towards the cabin. I realize as I'm hotwiring one of the trucks that I forgot to tell them about Buck being all dead and still on the front porch, getting ripe. I start to drive in that direction to tell them. Banjo music starts playing on the radio, and I think better of it. I ditch the truck and walk my happy ass down the mountain towards a town where I can get a cold beer and maybe a bus ticket back to New York.


	3. Masochist III: MissileFace Trainwreck

Masochist III:

So this one time I got hit by a missile. Scott and I were out on this training exercise in the middle of the Mojave with a few of the runts. Ever since we mutant types died off like rats, Scott the boy scout makes the pups train in all sorts of survival scenarios. Let me tell you, the Mojave in the middle of July makes the Danger Room look like a carnival. And the punks were complaining, too.

"It's too hot out here."

"I'm thirsty."

"When are we ever going to need our mutant powers to fight the desert? What are we going to do, blow up cacti?"

And so on. The only one that didn't complain was a big fury lug who looked like Sasquatch. He was sweating like a mutherfucker, too. Smelled like a dead dog. But did he complain? Nope. Just damn near passed out every time we hiked over a mile.

"If I was you, I'd shave myself, turkey!" The kid looked like he could cry. I decided to stop picking on him. I mean I'm hairy, but this dude's mutant power was something like growing ass hair all over his body, thick and course. Couldn't figure what good that'd do him in a fight. This guy belonged in the arctic, or in National Geographic.

Anyway, we're wrapping up for the weekend, heading out in the Blackbird, when all the sensors and alarms start buzzing and screaming and all of the sudden Scott's got the thing in overdrive. The thing that pisses me off is that I wasn't even strapped in, and I bet you that dick head was smiling up there in the cockpit. When I managed to pry myself from the back of the jet and readjust my crooked neck, I politely made my way to the front where Scott was engaged in evasive maneuvers.

"If you ever do that again..."

"What do you mean?" he said. "I do that every time."

"Fair point. What's going on?"

Scott told me that as soon as he'd taken off, a missile had locked on to the jet. The good thing, if there is a good thing about having a missile screaming at your ass, is that the Blackbird's sensors are real sensitive to stuff like missiles and what not. I remember the meeting we had with Forge to discuss some necessary upgrades on the old bird. There was a lot of techno-babble, McCoy and Scott and Forge all confusing each other and everyone else with their ivy-league vocabulary. About an hour into it, I'd had enough.

"What they're trying to say Forge, and I think I speak for all of us, is that I don't wanna die in a fireball a mile above the ground." I got the same look I always get when I chime in during these meetings, the look that says: "Logan, we know what you do best, and that does not include talking." Fine with me. When I hit the ground, I'll bounce and get up. The rest of you suckers will be paste.

But in the end, Forge gave the Bird some really spiffy improvements, not least of which included an onboard cooler, in which Scott expressly forbade the keeping of adult libations. I tried to argue that half the shit we'd found ourselves in could be significantly improved by a couple of drinks. I got the look again. I stand by my opinion: if I'm going to explode, I'd at least like to toast my toasted ass.

Other than the cooler, Forge managed to put some sensors on the Bird that are out of this world. Literally. Some kind of wonky alien technology that warns us of incoming projectiles and other such threats. But you know what I'd like to ask the little green men that invented this crap? If you can tell the missile's coming from over 100 miles, why the hell can't you just invent something that keeps the missile from hitting us? I mean, the damn plane can fly _invisible_, which I told everyone was pretty damn useless if you explode. The look again. Good luck finding an invisible black box, dummies.

"Have you cloaked us?" Scott starts to give me that look. "Don't you even look at me like that, one eye."

"We were cloaked before we took off. The missile is locked on to our heat signature."

"Did you fire the drones?"

"Yep. All out."

"So we need something hot, metallic, and fast. Something a missile really wants to eat?"

"Mmm hmm." The way Scott hummed made me wonder if he hadn't thought of it first. Asshole.

"Land the jet."

"You got it."

After he landed I called out the Sasquatch and told him to come with me.

"Who me, sir?"

"No, the other hairy monkey-ass-sweat-stained-mutant-punk-kid." He looked confused. "Yes, _you_ damned gorilla! You see anyone else on this jet growing crotch hair outta their face?" He got up, mumbling under his breath. "And don't you cry, neither!"

In the back of the jet I dropped the ramp, fired up my bike, and handed him a gas can.

"You want me to do what?"

"You heard me."

"I'm not comfortable with this."

"You think I am?" He reluctantly covered me in gasoline and lit a match. "You gonna stand there and look at the pretty fire, or are we gonna do this thing?" He dropped the match on the seat behind me and I lit up like a birthday cake. I revved the engine and sped back across the desert.

On my flaming ride, I got to wondering about things, things like: why do I always get chosen for this shit? Why is it when we draw straws for decoy, I always end up with my ass in the wind? Then it occurred to me: I'm the only one that can blow up and not die. What a great power. All the mutant abilities on earth, and I end up with the power to take an infinite amount of physical damage, and just when the pain is so bad that I think could swallow my own face, I don't die. Nope, that would be too easy. I get to grow all of it back, only to be nearly killed again.

It must have been one hell of a sight. I can just imagine Scott watching through binoculars, my flaming ass speeding across the desert, a little shiny dot appearing just over the horizon, making a bee line for the moron on the motorcycle. But you know what? It worked like a charm. It worked so damn well, as a matter of fact, that the missile hit me squa' in the face. It didn't explode on impact, though. Nope, that would've been a mercy. Instead it knocked me off my motorcycle, sent me three hundred miles an hour in the opposite direction (from which I was currently traveling somewhere over 60 in the other direction) and then ground into my face and fizzled like a dud-firework on my chest. And that sumbitch was heavy. The fire from the gasoline was nearly out, and my skin had started to heal. I pushed the missile off of me and stood up.

And then the fucker exploded.

That was a whole 'nother ride. The parts of me that stayed attached to my core ended up somewhere a half mile east of the explosion. Some of the parts I roamed around and collected. It's not that I couldn't re-grow them, but it doesn't take as long when you have the original part, and you know, a guy can get kinda sentimental about his flesh. Sometimes the new just ain't the same as the old.

I took me nearly an hour to hike back to the jet. Of course Scott had some excuse about making sure the coast was clear before he took off again, which of course is why he couldn't fly less than a mile to pick me up. Nope, hobbling back through the desert with a million holes in my gut was just too much of a character-building experience to pass up. Asshole.

When I boarded the jet, the pups were all strapped in and staring at me. It's like they'd never seen smoking flesh before. I couldn't tell if it was the fire, the explosion, or just the hot Mojave sun, but my skin was still smoldering as I gathered my things for the flight home. I opened the cooler and took out a beer. Scott gave me a look. I flipped him off and poured the can of beer over my head and shoulders. It was cold and felt good as the steam rose from my skin.

"So," I said to the runts. "Who wants to be an X-Man?"

Sasquatch lost his lunch on a little green kid. I grabbed another beer and strapped in for the ride home.


End file.
